Nucleus research park measures up well against competitors

How does the newly named J.D. Nichols Campus for Innovation and Entrepreneurship measure up against other university research parks across the country?

Very well, according to Ankur Gopal, founder and CEO of
Interapt LLC, a Louisville-based software development firm that is housed in
The Nucleus building on the downtown campus.

Gopal looked at parks all over the country – including in
such entrepreneurial hot spots as Silicon Valley and Austin, Texas – before
deciding to keep his fast-growing startup in Louisville.

“This has been a big move for us,” Gopal said July 15 at a meeting of the advisory board of Nucleus: Kentucky’s Innovation
Center.

Nucleus is an arm of the University of Louisville
Foundation, which is developing the J.D. Nichols campus.

Gopal said he chose the downtown Louisville site for his
company headquarters because he liked the park’s mix of startups, established
companies and tenants with ties to the University of Louisville.

Interapt is just one of the success stories on the
burgeoning J.D. Nichols campus. Gopal founded the company in 2009, and it
already has grown to 86 employees with satellite locations in Chicago, Las
Vegas and New Delhi.

At the downtown research park, Interapt is joined by more
than 60 other companies, four accelerators and two nonprofit organizations,
according to Nucleus president and CEO Vickie Yates Brown.

“I think we are on the right track,” she said of the site’s
quick development.

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer told the Nucleus advisory
board that he expects even bigger things at the park as the neighborhood around
it continues to grow.

The urban location is “a huge competitive advantage for us,”
he said, adding that coming hotels and restaurants will attract more tenants
and workers to the site.

“This area is going to look very different in four years,”
the mayor said.